Question 6: To what extent has Illustration constructed our understanding or view of historical events and perceptions of truth? History and art are intrinsically linked together when it comes to our understanding and knowledge of historical events. The depictions of groups of people or individuals drawn by people long gone gives us a glance into the mindset of past societies. they allow us to see cultural and social events. without us even having to have lived through it. We can mark social and cultural progression and digression through the materials used alongside the depiction of architecture. clothing and general imagery within the illustrations. However these images are very biased as they’re only specific shots of an historical event from a certain point of view and these images can be altered later on by different regimes who censor or destroy parts of the image we see. Illustration lends context to historical text and visa versa, together they give us a better and more well rounded understanding of things. But illustrations can be used to romanticise or demonise events and we rely heavily on them when creating our own opinions of past societies. You have things such as the Bayeux tapestry. a reportage piece at illustrative textile made to glorify war and the triumph of William the conqueror or the Georgian newspaper illustration depicting Napoleon Bonaparte as small. which was 100% false but is one of the most successful charter defamation campaigns via illustration in history. Historical illustration much like history itself is biased. it is the bases of most of our formed theories when trying to reimagine historical events however much like historical text, it must be taken with a grain of salt, everything is contextual and opinionated.
5 x Subjects • • • • •
Racism Fetishisation Art History Identity Sexuality
5 x Quotes •
‘even some of the most beautiful art depicting blacks had darker undertones’ (Blakely 1997)
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‘Our sexualised and racialised bodies always signal a history’ (Alexander 2005)
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“Our history did not begin in chains’ (Malcolm X 1964)
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‘to deconstruct images of blackness was a means…could literally write the black subject into representation.’ (Nelson 2002)
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‘has mainly focused upon marginalised racial groups like blacks, critiquing the ways that white artists have represented and indeed regularly misrepresented these people’ (Nelson 2010)
5 x Books •
Black Africans in Renaissance Europe
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The Image of the Black in Western Art, Volume I
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The Oxford companion to black British history.
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Reconstructing the Black Image
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Representing the Black Female Subject in Western Art
5 x Websites •
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20141023-i-show-blackis-beautiful
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http://dubois.fas.harvard.edu/image-of-the-black-archivelibrary
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http://www.historyextra.com/feature/missing-tudors-blackpeople-16th-century-england
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https://www.jstor.org/stable/291122? seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
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http://www.taneter.org/moors.html
Self Portrait by Alexander Pushkin
Anonymous Italian Artist !
Black Woman with Drape !
Italy (c. 1640s)
The Disputation of St. Erasmus and St. Maurice” by Matthias Grünewald, dated 1523.
Coin of General Hannibal
headless Jean-Léon Gérôme 1968